📢 Syrinx is a multi-channel sound installation by Pamela Z
🗓 DATE & TIME: August 30 to October 26, 2025. Open to the public: 11 am to 5 pm on Sat and Sun. Opening: Saturday August 30, 2025 from 3 – 5 pm.
📍 LOCATION: Harvestworks Art and Technology Program. Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island. New York City, USA.
Syrinx is a multi-channel sound installation named for the avian vocal organ. The piece is made from multiple layers of the various time-expanded and time-compressed permutations of birdsong and the human interpretation of it.
Artist Statement: I made this piece at a time when I was fascinated with time-compression and expansion of voice, and I often present it as a part of a sonic suite called Timepiece Triptych, which explores time-related processing on vocally produced sounds.
To create this work, I took what sounded like a short and simple birdsong and slowed it down numerous times in Pro Tools until it’s individual pitches and complex melodic material were revealed. I then learned to sing the melody and sped my voice up until it was the same length and pitch as the original birdsong.
The piece is made from multiple layers of the various permutations of the birdsong and the human interpretation of it. I originally created a four-channel version for an exhibition called “Sound Migrations” at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles (2004), and later re-edited it as an 8-channel (plus sub-woofer channel) work for the “New Sound New York” exhibition at the Kitchen in (2004). During this exhibition, the piece was played through a special immersive “sound cube” designed by Charlie Morrow. It is being presented in much the same way during this exhibition.
• BIOS
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performances, she has a growing body of installation works using multi-channel sound and video.
Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan – performing in international festivals and venues including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center (NY); La Biennale di Venezia; San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, the Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds (San Francisco); and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). She has received commissions to compose live and fixed-media scores for choreographers and film/video artists. Her large-scale, performance works, including Memory Trace, Baggage Allowance, Voci, and Gaijin, have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Artaud (Z Space) in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as at theaters in Washington D.C. and Budapest. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) premiered at The LAB in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in LA and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown work in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York); Savvy Contemporary (Berlin); the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs NY); the Dakar Biennale (Sénégal); Krannert Art Museum (IL), the Kitchen and Merkin Hall (NY).
Ms. Z has received commissions from chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, The Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel, Del Sol Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and Empyrean Ensemble. She recently composed a work for soprano Julia Bullock and the San Francisco Symphony. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Miya Masaoka, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Iova Koga (Inkboat), and Luciano Chessa. She has participated in New Music Theatre’s John Cage festivals, and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.
Pamela Z is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Rome Prize, MIT McDermott Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Dorothea Tanning Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, United States Artists, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; Creative Capital; the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award; an Ars Electronica honorable mention; and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information visit: www.pamelaz.co
Performance documentation of a live iteration of Syrinx:
Syrinx (from Pamela Z’s album A Secret Code)
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PRESS QUOTES
“It’s a rare delight to hear a composer assemble sound with such deft ease, and yet simultaneously such clarity of purpose … As dense and sonically overwhelming as these pieces are, they are … extremely economical, constructed using minimal procedures to maximal effect.”
-Nick Rich, San Francisco Classical Voice
“The quality and depth of Z’s materials, coupled with the unpredictability of her compositional structures, inventive spatialisation … bring concision and weight…we hear something singular and compelling…”
- Miriam Rezaei, The WIRE Magazine
““witty and beautifully touching new work by the experimental stalwart Pamela Z”
Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
FB: @pamelazed
Insta: @pamelazed
X: @pamelaz
INTERVIEWS AND PRESS COVERAGE
WIRE Magazine:
Pamela Z: Social Code-Breaker
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MgD7JM8FHXHnmRnWJ97kYhPyRWSPG7YG/view
New York Times:
“Wild Virtuoso,” Ever Expanding
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/arts/music/pamela-z-prototype-festival-music.html
New York Times:
5 Classical Albums to Hear Right Now
Pamela Z: A Secret Code
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZO-uSrE5aP6Bg_-_u982LiD-ipZgzLV/view